So my party decided to follow an off handed suggestion to figure out what was going on in New Briar (i.e. Shadows of Halfling Hall), instead of looking for Miles Friedman and hence heading to A2. SOHH is designed for levels 1 to 3. The party is as follows:

They all have magic Items (weapons of some sort) and the Wizard has fireball. One house rule is the "Big Purple Rule" - once a game session a player can roll the "big purple" - a 30 sided dice - in place of any die roll - to hit, SIEGE check, damage, table, etc. (just not hit points if they level). Often this is used to good effect to kill off the big bad. Though they could just as easily "whiff" with a d30 as a d20.

I've thought about a couple of options:

1. Leave it as is. Having a Cake Walk can be fun sometimes.2. I can simply up the Hit Dice of the creatures, surprising them with Zombies with 5 HD would be interesting.3. Find more challenging Undead Replacements at HD 5 thru 7 with the Bag O' Bones being 8 to 10 HD Instead of 5.

IIRC DMMike you actually wrote the novel and would appreciate any suggestions from you or anyone out there whether you ran the adventure or just read it. The game is tomorrow night (27 September) Thanks in advance!

Author:

DMMike [ Sat Sep 26, 2015 11:02 pm ]

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Re: Increasing Challenge for Shadows of Halfling Hall

Probably obvious, but SPOILERS!!!*********

Ok, all those would work but here are a few extras

1. Don't limit the Bag O' Bones to the barracs room. Let him chase PCs throughout the complex.

2. Make the mummies at the end full strength; maybe even increase a HD or two.

3. Jump up the zombie dogs in the library, giving them speed as well as undead strength.

4. Increase a penalty on turning the further into the place they go; a reflection of the evil magics.

I'll post more if anything else comes to me. To keep theme, don't put in any intelligent undead as the "You Know Who" (not Voldemort) doesn't like uppity minions.

Mike

Author:

TheMetal1 [ Sun Sep 27, 2015 3:33 am ]

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Re: Increasing Challenge for Shadows of Halfling Hall

DM Mike, Thanks for the ideas, very much appreciated!

Author:

TheMetal1 [ Mon Sep 28, 2015 10:14 pm ]

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Re: Increasing Challenge for Shadows of Halfling Hall

Quick update from the game last night...SPOILERS....

*****

The Halfling Ranger took lead in terms of Roleplay and there was a lot. As the party is chasing multiple threads they used speak with the dead from the head gobos from A1 in the Vargolg, that allowed them to get more information on who and why the Rottincaps were attacking.

After that they traveled onward to New Briar. I placed it north across the Blacktooth Ridge mountain range and into some hilly areas about 10 days travel by horse.

Their intent was to find Etta Granger who was the Halfling Rangers 2nd Cousin Twice Removed (on her mother's side). They started in the SE corner encounter the Curlymanes farm then headed north into town. Seeing the Curlymanes working with a Half-Orc, put the Parties Half-Orc at ease. But a random encounter later with the watch and horrible charisma roll, highlighted some of the problems and racism that Half-Orcs unfortunately face.

The directions were a bit confusing, on purpose, but once they found the graveyard they found the Grangers

With my party, I never know after the first one or two encounter's and hints, they may just rush right to the "danger" location, i.e. Willic's place. In this case, they decided not to but were determined to locate the Grangers, which they did. The Half-Orc did manage a natural 20 on his Charisma check with Etta and was heartedly welcomed into the home.

We had a lot of fun with roleplaying the encounters and the rumors. Thankfully this has bought me 1 or 2 more sessions to refine the challenge to the party as they investigate what happened.

Author:

DMMike [ Tue Sep 29, 2015 3:18 pm ]

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Re: Increasing Challenge for Shadows of Halfling Hall

Spoilers!

*********

Cool! I felt that one of my weaknesses in SoTHH was that I overdid it with the outlying farms. I'm glad to see that they are of use to CKs and not unwanted fluff.

Keep the stories coming! Let me know what they think of the zombie dogs. When I was playtesting this in my local group, they blasted through the halfling zombies without a second thought. Then, when they opened the library door and I described the zombie dogs.... Dead silence, no pun intended. Mass murder of sentients was fine, but zombie dogs was (in my players op.) going too far?

I like pets myself, but c'mon! People are dead here! But....puppies?

Mike, cute puppy slayer?

Author:

TheMetal1 [ Mon Oct 05, 2015 3:24 am ]

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Re: Increasing Challenge for Shadows of Halfling Hall

Ran the second session of SOHH with my group. Tonight we had: Halfling Ranger, Half-Elf Wizard, Half-Elf Rogue and Half-Orc Fighter. (SPOILERS)*****This whole session was just about all Roleplay. I like to have the PCs roll for no reason and then I actually have them roll for rumors and random encounters (most of the time they are unwitting).

Started at the Granger's House where the party spent the night (ranger in the house, the rest in the barn). They had a few more questions in the morning about various things (Over a breakfast of Buckwheat Pancakes with Heavy Syrup and Butter). Then it was onto town and they started at the temple. Had a few rumors let loose and played up the insecurity of Justin. It was a good interaction, and they party sat through a sermon of his. I used the Halfling god "Goldenberry" from "Of Gods & Monsters" and the service was "Dinner and Sermon" followed by a shout to "Goldenberry" and then apple pie with an "Amen". Their interaction earned them the good will of the Justin along with the Holy Water (as as the Party's Clerics are unable to play for a few sessions a possible "hireling"). Everyone wanted to be part of church that eats and worships this way and I described that anyone could join the ranks of Goldenberry's faithful. It is simply the Harvest of souls and placed in the apple barrel. I added some people didn't like to worship Goldenberry and referred to her as Frakenberry as if it was undead. This set them on edge and had them wondering if there is some nefarious worship going on or necromancy.

Then it was off to the Town Hall which was locked (and to my surprise they didn't break in) and then to the Portly Partridge. Used all the descriptions and personality quirks you mentioned for Red, Juna, Clenia and Wren. Merrin showed up as did Benjam. So they got the full details and signed a contract to figure out what happened. Again, a lot of roleplay and rumors coming out. They went on to investigate the Town Hall with Merrin opening it for them. Because of the Halfling Ranger, the party was allowed to hang-out and search the place. The Journal and Appraisal Record were discovered (and the party's Rogue was quite apprehensive about the locked drawer - which I encouraged!)

I explained the Journal was written in the Mayors hand writing (matched the Appraisal) and there were notes about changing the story to include himself and his daughter in the novel. I really liked the idea of saying "Lich" but describing the attributes of a Ghoul. They party started to get it after I mentioned that Janos had to deliver the killing blow after the adventure party was paralyzed with fear and the creature was screaming of hunger.n They're very interested in this circlet and are wondering about Willic's Debt.

Afterwards the party split with the halfling going to the Grangers and being taken to the Ashcots for dinner (the dude with the parrot). In one of their adventures the party discovered a dessicated halfling in a barrel, they brought it back and sent it on to a "Halfling Town" (i.e. New Briar) and the Ashcots I decided were the last remaining family of this halfling. So the Ranger will encounter some rumors and the parrot and possibly a Zombie Halfling on her own (with the Grangers).

The rest of the party, went to the Inn. While their they were going to listen to rumors (but failed in a listen check with a critical failure) so I had the halflings strike up a song "What does the Fox Say". In the midst of that and some other conversation with various folks for more rumors, Bejam shows up "warning them about the bad temper of Merrin head of the watch." Naturally he tries to pickpocket our party's wizard and fails (critical failure) the wizard makes a show of taking his hand off the pouch and Bejam decides its time to leave (i.e. "Darkness" Pellet). Wizard makes his Dexterity check keeping his pouch, but decides to cast "Web". The inn was full of people who wanted to see the "adventurers" and now they're seeing evil blackness, screaming of giant spiders and now there are shouts of "Fire" and "Get the watch", and "Where is the bucket brigade!"

All in a great time. Looking forward to more and thinking about how Benjam will respond (i'm making him a bit higher level than the stated 2nd Level probably 6th)

We keep you posted on how it goes but know we have a by-week next week. If you're interested, a few players do weekly "Journal" write-ups from their PC's perspective I can PM them if your interested.

Author:

DMMike [ Mon Oct 05, 2015 7:05 pm ]

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Re: Increasing Challenge for Shadows of Halfling Hall

Sure, though you might just email them to me. My last name with the number 69 at that gmail place. 69 is my birth year....don't look at me like that!

Glad the various personalities and inter-relations are of use. I actually put more work into Newbriar than I usually do for written adventures. It was my 'first' module publication so I went with TLG's stock "1/2 of module must be setting" format.

On a side note, but Miryn's my wife Liz's character I imported into the module for fun.

Mike

Author:

BudaZoa [ Thu Oct 15, 2015 1:10 pm ]

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Re: Increasing Challenge for Shadows of Halfling Hall

1969 was a great year for the birth of Game Masters !

This is by far one of my top ten modules of all time.

When I worked it into my Ravenloft campaign (prior to the mist snatchin up my pc's) the fighter was fifth level and one of our jesters was fourth level.

This took several sessions to complete, due to a lot of roleplaying and mischief by the two jesters in the group, but characters all gained levels during the adventure as well.

That's the beauty of this module, roleplaying is in abundance, and it challenge the pc's on many levels but can easily be adjusted for any character level

Author:

DMMike [ Thu Oct 15, 2015 6:57 pm ]

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Re: Increasing Challenge for Shadows of Halfling Hall

Thanks for the kind words... Liz and my old gaming group (listed in the 1st print C&C PHB) really enjoyed the module. Now, their *characters* didn't....but hey, that's the way it goes.

Mike

Author:

TheMetal1 [ Mon Nov 09, 2015 3:11 am ]

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Re: Increasing Challenge for Shadows of Halfling Hall

DMMike,

Just a quick note, we're still working our way through it and having a blast. Party has actually made it to Willic's Estate and gotten in the mix.

I bumped up more than half the Zombies to Ghouls, which the PCs did not like as the Ghouls Paralysis causes much havoc. I replaced the Zombie Dogs with Hell Hounds, they dispatched those pretty quick, but I'm going to have them come back as Zombies dogs the next session! I changed up the Zombies in the Kitchen to Shadows, a good battle, and their action point mechanic (big purple) caused a quick end, but not without sapping strength. The party decided to leave after that an recover in town. They brought several of the bodies back to inter in the cemetery and just re-entered the estate. They're not trying to get into Room 7 (Willic's Room) which will be most likely a Wraith. Will be interesting to see how they deal with it.

Author:

DMMike [ Mon Nov 09, 2015 7:07 pm ]

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Re: Increasing Challenge for Shadows of Halfling Hall

Spoilers..................

...I cant' wait to hear how well they deal with the dungeon level. Steve C./Troll Lord told me he ran the dungeon level for his group once...and it was the first dungeon they just gave up on and left.